Sainsbury’s has joined a new advisory group set up by the UK government to help shape a national strategy for economic, social and environmental sustainability within the United Kingdom’s inshore fishing fleet.
The advisory group — which also includes fishermen, conservationists and economists — will feed into a new project called Sustainable Access to Inshore Fisheries (SAIF), recently launched by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), which has its sights set a fresh sustainability plan.
“We’re aiming to deliver an action plan for achieving sustainability in the spring of 2010 and a full strategy in 2011,” a DEFRA spokesperson told SeafoodSource.
The vulnerability of European fish stocks took center stage in April when the European Commission released a green paper calling for “whole-scale and fundamental” reform of the current fisheries regime, known as the Common Fisheries Policy.
Since then, governments across the European Union have kicked off projects to advance the sustainability dialogue. Following a stakeholder meeting last month on the future of France’s fisheries, dubbed “Grenelle de la Mer,” French President Nicolas Sarkozy laid out his country’s maritime strategy over the next 10 years, unveiling a “blue book” of 138 different commitments related to the sea and French coast.
In the UK, the advisory group to the SAIF project will contribute to the development of a new national sustainability strategy with input from fisherman, said the DEFRA spokesperson.
Industry “will be invited to contribute in a number of ways — an online forum, stakeholder meetings. We’re also trying to visit as many coastal locations as possible to hear what fishermen think,” added the spokesperson.
When asked recently by MP Richard Benyon to elaborate on participants in SAIF, UK Fisheries Minister Huw Irranca-Davies replied, “Their knowledge and experience will be key to enabling them to provide innovative ideas to tackle the problems facing the fleet and inform long-term decisions.”
